


Are You Still Shivering?

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Anxiety, Depression, Dissociation, Disturbing Themes, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-18 01:07:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21502759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: Are you still cold?
Relationships: Henry Collins/Harry D. S. Goodsir
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Are You Still Shivering?

**Author's Note:**

> The long-awaited- by me, mainly- follow-up to "The Frolic Architecture of the Snow", taking place immediately after the events of "Snow". It is necessary to have read that story for this one to make sense, but here, for the reader's convenience, is a brief summation of earlier events: to whit, Collins did not lead the creature to Terror Camp, Hickey and Tozer were hanged, and Collins, though worse for wear, survived his overdose, thanks in part to Dr. Goodsir caring for him. Then, y'know, they had sex.  
> The title of this story and the quote in the summary come from the song, Are You Shivering? by Coil.  
> This story contains detailed descriptions of the symptoms that Collins experiences, due to a combination of lead poisoning, mental illness, and trauma, and as such, may be inappropriate for some readers. Please use your discretion.  
> I am not involved in the production of The Terror. No one pays me to do this. This story and the work it's based upon are fiction. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

He walks as though in a dream. At midday, the air becomes suddenly too bright, a haze like a collection of smudges on a pane of glass. The wind’s a too-insistent call, heard from too great a distance for the listener to receive from it anything but troubling urgency. In the haze and the call, Henry begins to feel as though all of him is going numb from cold. He bites his tongue, the inside of his cheek to stir himself, and the tide of numbness recedes sufficiently for him to be able to continue with his work. Later, though, he finds himself in an idle moment. The idleness hits him as both a welcome release from toil, and as a sudden affliction would; the shock of waking up ill when one had gone to bed feeling fine. No one will miss him for the moment, so he walks away, telling himself that he only means to work out this strange feeling that makes him dread stillness. He’s aware that he is looked at, but this stays on the surface of his thoughts. It doesn’t touch him, and it doesn’t make him stop walking. The motion makes him feel more solid, but only just, in this bright cold that drags him toward numbness in one direction and begins to tug him toward panic in the other. Without meaning to, he approaches the infirmary. Fleetingly, he thinks to change his course, but he carries on, looking but not really seeing, as though guided by another sense. So that the first thing that Henry truly registers is the blood spotting Dr. Goodsir’s apron.  
Harry. He should be ‘Harry’, now, to Henry. To deny Harry his Christian name in the privacy of Henry’s thoughts would be to deny them both; even as thinking it makes Henry feel ashamed, as though taking a liberty. It can’t be so much of a liberty, though, when Henry woke that morning in Harry’s arms. He can still smell Harry on his skin. Consciously thinking of it, recalling what happened only hours earlier, but had begun to drift far from him, what he had willed himself not to think, lest it show on him in some way, Henry feels heat rise up his body, his chest to his neck, as from a stove to a chimney. He was right to keep it private, he thinks ruefully. Now, Harry will see him, know his thoughts, and feel embarrassed. A fretful ticking commences in Henry’s belly, increasing as he notices that the bloodstains on the apron are new, red, not the rusty brown they’ll become with time. Given enough time, they’ll turn the color of grease or strong tea. Henry can smell it, or thinks he can. Nausea swims up through him, now, guts to throat; the creaking cramp that also comes when hunger is neglected.  
Henry feels like a dog sniffing around a kitchen door.  
Harry closes the tent from which he’s exited. Before he does, Henry thinks he catches a glimpse of bare skin. Someone lying uncovered on one of the benches. “Are you unwell, Mr. Collins?”  
Henry looks around.  
“Come through here, please,” Harry says, his hand a moment on Henry’s back before he begins taking off his apron. Mr. Bridgens turns to look as they enter the other tent. “Could we have a moment, please, Mr. Bridgens?”  
If Bridgens thinks anything about this, he gives no indication, nodding pleasantly to Henry as he goes.  
“What is it, Collins?” Harry asks.  
“Would you please call me ‘Henry’?” He sounds far too eager as he says it, but he can’t bring himself to hate the tone of his voice. If he sounds like a man in distress, ready to beg, it’s because that’s what he is.  
“Are you all right, Henry?”  
He looks down. Now that he’s here, embarrassment has chased away the urgency, and he can no longer remember what it was he needed. Not ‘needed’. What he felt that he might have a right to, and could safely ask for, in the middle of the day. Harry told him that he could come back at night. It’s not yet night. The smell of blood hangs in the air, though they’re far from whatever must have been its source. He’s made a mistake.  
“You look a bit flushed,” Harry says gently, his expression concerned. “May I check your pulse?”  
“Yes,” Henry says, and Harry takes Henry’s hand by the wrist, lifts Henry’s sleeve and holds his thumb there. He presses his fingers to Henry’s throat, and Henry feels his breath hitch. Harry touches his forehead, his cheeks.  
“Your heart’s beating a little fast,” Harry says. “Have you experienced shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness?”  
“Nothing like that.”  
Harry caresses his cheek. He takes Henry’s hand in his. “Then, you’re all right?”  
“Yes. I only wanted to see you.” If Harry is going to be kind to him, the least that Henry owes him is the truth.  
Harry smiles. “It’s good to see you. I have to get back to work, but I am glad you came here, and I’ll see you tonight.”  
“I can still come here, at night.” It isn’t a question. He doesn’t want it to be.  
“Yes.” Harry looks at him, again concerned, then kisses him, quickly but softly. “I have to go, but I’ll see you tonight.”  
“Yes,” Henry says. He breathes in the word, and feels restored.  
It won’t last. It can’t.  
It diminishes with each passing hour, until he again feels pulled taut. Not slowly, but all at once, as though one were breaking a thread. There is the point before breaking, the moment when one can see the thread thin, before the thread snaps. He makes himself concentrate on his work. He wills himself to remember how he used to feel, working all day. It was often wearying, sometimes tedious, but it felt right, and he misses it, now, with a longing as acute as a physical ache. He hadn’t known that it was good, while he was feeling it. He hadn’t known that he was good. He was sound. He was like other men. How could he have known? One doesn’t think of illness until one is ill. If he had been able to imagine how he now feels, it wouldn’t have occurred to him then to fear it. It would have seemed so far away; as far away as his former self is from him, now. That man wouldn’t think and feel the things that Henry does. That man wouldn’t have drunk the coca wine. That man wouldn’t have been so hungry for relief, because there had been no condition to relieve. That man might feel warmly toward Harry, be glad to be in his presence, feel grateful for Harry’s affection, but he wouldn’t need Harry. That man never felt need this way. He woke and slept, ate his meals, did his work, enjoyed the company of others, but could be alone. How did he do it?  
Finally, the night comes, and Henry makes himself walk slowly to the infirmary, taking a long way. He almost hopes that he’ll be waylaid. Someone will need him for something, and he’ll get there later. Harry will have a chance to miss him. In missing him, Harry will think of him, form an idea about him. Harry will begin to think of Henry as a man, and not as whatever Henry now is. When he goes to Harry, Henry will still be filled with this other concern, will have the look of a man who is still needed, who does something other than need. Harry will speak to him as one speaks to a man, asking questions about Henry’s duties, his cares. They will have both come from the world, the society of others, work and thought, to each other.  
No one comes. No one so much as looks at Henry. He goes up to the infirmary, a terrible worry brewing in him. Harry isn’t there. Harry’s been called away. Harry’s still busy, will put him off; tell him to come back later, but not say when ‘later’ will be. Harry will send him away. Henry clenches his hands into fists. The feeling of his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands is something to concentrate on, though even this feels far away. He goes the rest of the way, making himself think only of this, as though the irritation were something he could tuck into his fist, hold onto.  
Then, he’s there.  
“Good night, Mr. Collins,” Bridgens says, on his way out of the infirmary. He looks tired. Having done something to earn his fatigue, he looks satisfied. Sleep will come for him, and the morning will split his sleep, and he’ll rise. Henry remembers.  
“Good night,” Henry murmurs.  
The smell of blood is gone.  
Harry’s making notes in a book, his spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose. Henry says nothing, watches him for the pleasure of watching. If Harry wished it, Henry would stay here, like this, not speaking, only watching.  
Harry looks up. He smiles. He puts aside his book, takes off his spectacles, gets up. He closes the tent behind Henry. He kisses Henry.  
He wraps his arms around Harry, holds him, touches him on his shoulders, his back, the back of his neck. He wants… Now that it’s happening, he can’t think. For gaining the source of relief, his pain is only greater, a deep, lacerating ache in his chest, close to his heart. It urges him forward, but it makes him shy. He can’t let Harry know that it’s there, this great, inane throb, that terrorizes Henry and batters him from the inside out. He makes himself kiss Harry gently, touch him softly. He doesn’t want to do it any other way. He hasn’t been thinking about biting Harry’s lip since before he first kissed him. He hasn’t thought about what the blood would taste like. He hasn’t thought about Harry slapping him in response, a hard rap on Henry’s mouth that brings forth its own bloom of red. He hasn’t thought about Harry biting him, not on the lip but on the throat. Harry’s teeth splitting his skin, and making him bleed. Wearing Henry away until there’s nothing left of him. That’s what he’s been thinking of, since before he was in Harry’s bed.  
The heat of his own body becomes uncomfortable, so he takes off his coat. Harry’s hands are on him, over his clothes, then underneath. What is it that Harry feels? Is Harry imagining the flesh under Henry’s skin, as though mapping it for an anatomical diagram? He is, Henry decides. It makes him feel less alone, in a way. Harry could go down, all the way down in Henry, touch the parts of him that Harry must imagine, but cannot see. Henry takes off his jumper, lowers his braces, makes it easier for Harry to get to him. Harry takes off his gloves, slips his hand up the back of Henry’s shirt. Henry inclines his head, kisses Harry’s mouth, then his throat, then his mouth, again. He helps Harry up onto the bench, slips his hands under Harry’s coat. He feels Harry breathing. He feels Harry’s hands on him. He undoes Harry’s trousers. Feels Harry tremble. Kisses him as he touches him. Gently, Henry uncovers Harry, bringing Harry forward slightly. Henry crouches down.  
He has his mouth on the insides of Harry’s thighs. Then, on the whole of him. Harry sighs, then moans softly. Harry brings his coat in around Henry, covering him. It’s like the surface of the water breaking, then resolving itself, the light of the room swallowed. Henry doesn’t think that. He doesn’t think anything. He kisses gently, then takes Harry deeper when Harry indicates he wants more, his hand resting on the back of Henry’s head. He closes his eyes, listens to the sounds that Harry makes, though they seem to be increasingly distant. There, in the dark, Henry feels himself sinking, but continues, focusing his mind on the necessary motion. He thinks of Harry doing this for him the night before. It warms him, and he’s glad for it. Yet, something seems to draw him further and further from everything around him. His heart beats faster. He can no longer feel Harry’s hand. Down in the dark, he hears something, but he doesn’t know what it is. His pulse thunders in his head, blotting out the other sound. No one touches him in the dark. Slowly, he realizes that he has no real awareness of anything. Except for his own teeth.  
Breathing deeply, he takes his mouth away. He frees himself from the dark, but it’s just Harry’s coat, now open around him, and for a strange moment, Henry feels as though he no longer knows where he is. Harry is sitting back and leaning on his hands, his mouth open in surprise.  
“I’m sorry,” Henry says. He’s panting. He makes himself slow his breathing. “I’m sorry,” he repeats.  
“Was it something that I did?” Harry covers himself, then takes Henry’s hand in his own. He looks down. Henry looks down, too. He sees the red marks on the palm of his hand. Shame needles him.  
“It wasn’t you.” He slips his hand into Harry’s coat. His hand reflexively finds Harry’s prick, still wet from his mouth. “It’s-” He looks to the side. He can’t really say what it is. He keeps his hand where it is, as much as out of some odd protective impulse as the desire to feel Harry, remaining, to spite everything else. “It’s too much,” he says.  
“Do you want to rest?” Harry asks, his hand on Henry’s face.  
“I want to finish. Just not in the dark.”  
“I’m sorry,” Harry says. “I didn’t think of that.”  
“Can we lie down?”  
“Yes. I think I’d like to lie down, anyway,” Harry says, pulling himself together. He takes Henry’s hand, leads Henry to his bed. It’s soft beneath Henry, the parts of it he feels around Harry, and he’s uncovered. Even the cool air feels good, on his head, on his face. Kissing Harry, Henry uncovers him again. He feels the way that Harry moves, Harry’s skin beneath his hands. He hears Harry now, close to him. He feels the warmth of Harry’s body, clashing with the coldness around them. Touches him. Tastes him. He begins to tire, but he goes on. His eyes are closed, but he knows that there’s light. He can hear Harry. He feels Harry’s hands in his hair. Harry moans, says his name. He pushes up a little roughly. It’s not that much of a knock, but Henry imagines his lip splitting open, his blood on Harry. His blood mixing with the bitterness and salt that flood his mouth. Some of it runs down his chin. Harry sighs, smooths his hand over Henry’s face. Cautiously, Henry sits up. He swallows, wipes his mouth on the cuff of his shirt. There’s no blood there, or on Harry; just the odd drop of milkiness, like a pearl of ice.  
Harry pulls Henry to him, kisses him, Henry’s body turned to the side, leaving Harry exposed. He places his hand between Harry’s legs, simply to feel him. As before, he’s still wet. It occurs to Henry that he should find a handkerchief, but he stays as he is, feeling what he feels, allowing himself to enjoy it. He kisses Harry, moves carefully to press himself against Harry’s hip. The shock of contact makes him jerk, another shock, one that he enjoys all the more for being unable to prevent it. It’s secret like this in a way, and should be; more like he’s seeing to himself than engaging in an activity that requires two. Yet, he makes Harry a party to it, and it’s shameful and weird, but this only excites Henry, his wretchedness and Harry’s allowance of it.  
“Can I stay like this?” he asks Harry. Will he be permitted? He makes himself stop until he receives an answer. The ache that fills him in stilling himself drags pleasure behind it.  
“I can do something else for you, if you’d like.”  
“I’d like it if you held me.”  
“You can rest a little bit more of your weight on me,” Harry says, and helps Henry position himself.  
He feels his hips jerk again, his being compressed to a point between his own weight and Harry’s body beneath him. He doesn’t have to do anything but move. He hardly has to do that. Harry’s arms are around him, holding him in place. Harry’s kissing him and touching him, more gently than carnally, all the better for the unevenness of sensation: the soft press of Harry’s mouth on his as he works himself against Harry’s hip. Henry feels himself unwind inside, a long, slow unwinding he follows to the end, moving against Harry.  
After a moment, he turns onto his side, helps Harry cover himself, wraps his arms around Harry. His clothes are stained, sticking to him, but the irritation is welcome. It keeps him in what they’ve just done, like Harry’s scent on him, Harry’s taste in his mouth. He wants to linger there, in the fact of it. It was something that he did, and it was good.  
Harry brushes aside his hair. “Do you want to sleep?”  
“Could we lie here for a little while?” With the lantern illuminated, he thinks, but doesn’t say.  
“Yes. Would you like to freshen up a little?”  
“I suppose I should.”  
“I think we both should.”  
He retrieves his jumper and his coat, sets them on the bed, keeping his back turned at first to give Harry his privacy. When he feels it’s safe, he turns around, allows himself the pleasure of watching Harry wash his face, his sleeves rolled up, his shirt unbuttoned. He looks at Harry’s forearms, his shoulders, the back of his neck. He watches the rise and fall of Harry’s chest, as he breathes while he works. He doesn’t touch. He leaves Harry undisturbed. He waits for his turn. Busying himself in arranging the bedding, Harry does not watch him at the basin. Henry cleans himself, dabs perfunctorily with a damp cloth at the stains on his drawers. The cold is beginning to reach him, chilling the perspiration on his body. He redresses himself, puts on his jumper. Harry is in bed, reading. He pulls back the blankets for Henry. He puts his book aside. He lets Henry wrap around him, turns toward Henry, his hands wandering under Henry’s jumper. What does he feel? What does Harry know about Henry? Can he, perhaps, feel the inside of Henry, like this, divining something that would be unknowable to anyone else? Is there something good in Henry?  
He says… he isn’t sure what he says, but Harry looks at him, his hand on Henry’s waist, pushing up Henry’s jumper.  
“I just feel you,” Harry says. “I like the way you feel.”  
“How do I feel?” For a moment, he’s not sure how he means it. He half expects Harry to relate the things that Henry has been thinking, as though these are plain to all who see him. Perhaps everyone knows. He feels himself color, shocked by a sudden wave of jealousy, ashamed of it. As much as he wants Harry to know him, he doesn’t want to be known to others. Nor does he want Harry to know anyone else in this way.  
“Solid. Whole.” Harry looks sad when he says it. Why does he look sad? Henry must ask, because Harry then looks surprised, a little ashamed.  
“It’s all right,” Henry says, lays his hand against Harry’s cheek. How strange that it should be he, comforting Harry.  
“I was afraid,” Harry says. “I didn’t know if I could help you.”  
“I know,” Henry says. He begins to say that he’s sorry, but the words catch in his throat. He can’t wish it away, but he would dearly like to forget. To forget all the way back to the time when such concerns were unimaginable to him. Back to the ship. Back to the ocean. Back home. Back to himself. He makes himself say it. Desire as he might to have committed no offense, he knows what he did. “I’m sorry.” If he says it sufficiently often, if he proves himself to be as contrite as he knows himself to be, perhaps God will show him mercy, blast the memories from him. Sink him into a sleep that unfolds into a dream, from which he’ll never wake. The dream of himself. Himself, now so far away that the man could have been a dream. When Henry woke, that man was gone. With that man gone, who is Henry, now?  
“You needn’t be sorry,” Harry says, a fierce edge to his voice. “It’s over,” he says, softly, but no less decisively.  
It isn’t over. How could it be? Every moment takes Henry further from himself, locks him more surely into this new creature, still forming, like something yet to be born, even as it walks and talks and frets and needs. “Can I stay here?” he asks, though he knows the answer. If Harry was going to allow him to sleep in Harry’s bed, it is assumed. Henry doesn’t want to assume. He wants to know. Every second, he wants to, he must know. The question is wearing, wearying, and Harry will surely tire of it, but Henry cannot avoid it, must ask it, must receive an answer. He must risk the answer. God knows why, but he must seek, must find. He is, he knows, still down in the dark.  
He’s never coming up again.  
“Yes,” Harry says gently.  
“I don’t know why I keep asking.” Though, he knows very well why he continues to ask. If he says it, though, perhaps the knowledge will leave him. He’ll again be a stranger to himself, but perhaps a more agreeable one. As blank and as unbroken as a field of newly-fallen snow.  
“I don’t mind it if you ask. I like having you here with me.” Harry caresses his cheek. “I’ll tell you as many times as you wish me to.”  
“I may wish you to tell me a great many times.” Henry makes himself laugh, as though it were a joke, albeit one at his own expense, but he only sounds nervous.  
“As many times as you need,” Harry says, his voice low, looking into Henry’s eyes. Henry feels something seize in his chest. He opens his mouth, but can’t speak. Harry, it seems, will have to speak for both of them: “But for now, just be still, with me.”  
The past is far from Henry. Untouchable, now, lost to him, as is the man that he once was. All of that is gone, and the realization, which constantly strikes him anew, as though with every breath, is sickening and painful. There is no moment of the day that he’s not afraid; of himself, and of everything else. And nothing can be done about that. The thought fills him with an awful grief that would crush the breath from him. He cannot make it leave, and he feels exhausted, breathless, after having tried for so long.  
Yet, it’s not only him breathing, in this bed. Harry is next to him. He feels Harry breathing. He feels Harry’s heart beating. He feels the warmth of Harry’s body. He can still taste Harry. He did not, nor could he, wash Harry from his skin. All of this is there, with Henry, even down in the dark. He will forget, he knows, but he’ll find a way to remind himself. It may not be enough to take away this unrest, this affliction, but it’s important to Henry, so he will still remind himself. He feels a great swell of gratitude to Harry. Henry will remind himself of this, as well. Even if he cannot be good to himself, he will be good to Harry.  
He’ll find a way.


End file.
